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Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a funny animal cartoon character and the official mascot of The Walt Disney Company. He was created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at the Walt Disney Studios in 1928. An anthropmorphic mouse who typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves, Mickey has become one of the most recognizable cartoon characters in the world. Mickey first was seen in a single test screening. Mickey officially debuted in the short film Steamboat Willie (1928), one of the first sound cartoons. He went on to appear in over 130 films. Mickey appeared primarily in short films, but also occasionally in feature-length films. Ten of Mickey's cartoons were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, one of which, Lend a Paw, won the award in 1942. In 1978, Mickey became the first cartoon character to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Beginning in 1930, Mickey has also been featured extensively as a comic strip character. His self-titled newspaper strip, drawn primarily by Floyd Gottfredson, ran for 45 years. Mickey has also appeared in comic books and in television series. He also appears in other media such as video games as well as merchandising, and is a meetable character at the Disney parks. Mickey generally appears alongside his girlfriend Minnie Mouse, his pet dog Pluto, his friends Donald Duck, and Goofy, and his nemesis Pete, among others. Originally characterized as a mischievous antihero, Mickey's increasing popularity led to his being rebranded as an everyman, usually seen as a flawed, but adventurous hero. In 2009, Disney began to rebrand the character again by putting less emphasis on his pleasant, cheerful side and reintroducing the more mischievous and adventurous sides of his personality, beginning with the video game Epic Mickey. Origin "I only hope that we never lose sight of one thing – that it was all started by a mouse." —Walt Disney, Disneyland; October 27, 1954 Mickey Mouse was created as a replacement for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, an earlier cartoon character created by the Disney studio for Charles Mintz, a film producer who distributed product through Universal Studios. In the spring of 1928, with the series going strong, Disney asked Mintz for an increase in the budget. But Mintz instead demanded that Walt take a 20 percent budget cut, and as leverage, he reminded Disney that Universal owned the character, and revealed that he had already signed most of Disney's current employees to his new contract. Angrily, Disney refused the deal and returned to produce the final Oswald cartoons he contractually owed Mintz. Disney was dismayed at the betrayal by his staff, but determined to restart from scratch. The new Disney Studio initially consisted of animator Ub Iwerks and a loyal apprentice artist, Les Clark, who together with Wilfred Jackson were among the few who remained loyal to Walt. One lesson Disney learned from the experience was to thereafter always make sure that he owned all rights to the characters produced by his company. In the spring of 1928, Disney asked Ub Iwerks to start drawing up new character ideas. Iwerks tried sketches of various animals, such as dogs and cats, but none of these appealed to Disney. A female cow and male horse were also rejected. They would later turn up as Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar. (A male frog, also rejected, would later show up in Iwerks' own Flip the Frog series.) Walt Disney got the inspiration for Mickey Mouse from a tame mouse at his desk at Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1925, Hugh Harman drew some sketches of mice around a photograph of Walt Disney. These inspired Ub Iwerks to create a new mouse character for Disney. "Mortimer Mouse" had been Disney's original name for the character before his wife, Lillian, convinced him to change it, and ultimately Mickey Mouse came to be The actor Mickey Rooney claimed that, during his Mickey McGuire days, he met cartoonist Walt Disney at the Warner Brothers studio, and that Disney was inspired to name Mickey Mouse after him. This claim however has been debunked by Disney historian Jim Korkis, since at the time of Mickey Mouse's development, Disney Studios had been located on Hyperion Avenue for several years, and Walt Disney never kept an office or other working space at Warner Brothers, having no professional relationship with Warner Brothers, as the Alice Comedies and Oswald cartoons were distributed by Universal. Design Ub Iwerks designed Mickey's body out of circles in order to make the character simple to animate. Disney employees John Hench and Marc Davis believed that this design was part of Mickey's success – it made him more dynamic and appealing to audiences. Mickey's circular design is most noticeable in his ears, which in traditional animation, always appear circular no matter which way Mickey faces. This made Mickey easily recognizable to audiences and made his ears an unofficial personal trademark. Even today, the symbol "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mickey_Mouse_head_and_ears.png" is often used by the Disney Company to represent Mickey. This later created a dilemma for toy creators who had to recreate a three-dimensional Mickey. In animation in the 1940s Mickey's ears were animated in perspective. Animator Fred Moore would later redesign Mickey's body away from its circular design to a pear-shape design. Colleague Ward Kimball praised Moore for being the first animator to break from Mickey's "rubber hose, round circle" design. Although Moore himself was nervous at first about changing Mickey, Walt Disney liked the new design and told Moore "that's the way I want Mickey to be drawn from now on." Each of Mickey's hands has only three fingers and a thumb. Disney said that this was both an artistic and financial decision, explaining "Artistically five digits are too many for a mouse. His hand would look like a bunch of bananas. Financially, not having an extra finger in each of 45,000 drawings that make up a six and one half minute short has saved the Studio millions." In the film The Opry House (1929), Mickey was given white gloves as a simple way of contrasting his naturally black hands against his black body. Mickey's eyes were large and white and defined by black outlines. In Steamboat Willie the black outlines were removed, although the upper edges still contrasted with his head. Mickey's eyes were later re-imagined as only consisting of the small black dots which were his pupils, while what were the upper edges of his eyes became a hairline. This is evident only when Mickey blinks. Fred Moore later redesigned the eyes to be small white eyes with pupils and gave his face a Caucasian skin tone instead of plain white. This new Mickey first appeared in 1938 on the cover of a party program, and in animation the following year with the release of The Pointer. Mickey is sometimes given eyebrows as seen in The Simple Things (1953) and in the comic strip, although he does not have eyebrows in his most recent appearances. Besides Mickey's gloves and shoes, he typically wears only a pair of short overalls with two large buttons and shoulder straps sometimes included in the front. Although the animated Mickey was seen only in black and white for over seven years print images confirmed that the shorts were red. When Mickey is not wearing his red short overalls, he is often still wearing red clothing. This includes a red bandmaster coat, red overalls, a red cloak, a red coat, and a red shirt. Voice actors A large part of Mickey's screen persona is his famously shy, falsetto voice. From his first speaking role in the 1929 short The Karnival Kid onward, Mickey was voiced by Walt Disney himself, a task in which Disney took great personal pride. However, by 1946, Disney was becoming too busy with running the studio to do regular voice work which meant he could not do Mickey's voice anymore (and as it is speculated his cigarette habit had damaged his voice over the years), and during the recording of the Mickey and the Beanstalk section of Fun and Fancy Free, Mickey's voice was handed over to veteran Disney musician and actor Jimmy MacDonald. (Both Disney's and MacDonald's voices can be heard on the final soundtrack.) MacDonald voiced Mickey in the remainder of the theatrical shorts, and for various television and publicity projects up until his retirement in the mid-1970s, although Walt voiced Mickey again for the introductions to the original 1954—1959 run of The Mickey Mouse Club TV series and the "Fourth Anniversary Show" episode of the Disneyland TV series aired on September 11, 1958. The 1983 short film Mickey's Christmas Carol ''marked the theatrical debut of the late Wayne Allwine as Mickey Mouse, who was the voice of Mickey until his death in 2009. Allwine once recounted something MacDonald had told him about voicing Mickey: "The main piece of advice that Jim gave me about Mickey helped me keep things in perspective. He said, 'Just remember kid, you’re only filling in for the boss.' And that’s the way he treated doing Mickey for years and years. From Walt, and now from Jimmy." Allwine was, incidentally, married to Russi Taylor, the current voice of Minnie Mouse. Les Perkins did the voice of Mickey in two TV specials "Down and Out with Donald Duck" and "DTV Valentine" in the mid-1980s. Bret Iwan is the current voice of Mickey. His early recordings in 2009 included work for the Disney Cruise Line, Mickey toys, Theme Parks, and also the Disney on Ice: Celebrations! ice show. His first video game voice-over of Mickey Mouse can be found on ''Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, a video game for PlayStation Portable. He has also voiced the character in the next games for the ''Kingdom Hearts ''series. Iwan also does the vocal effects of Mickey in the games Epic Mickey and Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two. Despite Iwan being Mickey's primary voice actor, the character's voice is provided by Chris Diamantopoulos in the 2013 animated series, as the producers were looking for a retro voice to match the vintage look of the series. See also *Mickey's Magical World *Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures *List of Walt Disney animated features